There are those that believe in the power of direct response – marketing that laser targets prospects, creates emotional buy-in, triggers our most powerful and primal feelings, and then asks for a sale right there on the spot… And there are those that don’t.
It’s not hard to see which camp has the right idea. They usually have bigger bank accounts, better cars, and spend a lot less time worrying about why their advertising isn’t working.
Josh Henry-Hicks of MuteSix understands just how much of a “cheat code” direct response marketing can be. There’s a lot of magic in this kind of marketing – and plenty of opportunities to profit, too.
Direct Response Doesn’t Dance Around
One of the big reasons to fall in love with direct response is that it doesn’t dance around the way that brand or message marketing does.
Think about the last time you saw an advertisement on TV that made you want to run out and buy whatever it was that they were peddling.
Never happened, right?
You’re not alone!
Today’s mass marketing is almost 100% brand marketing or message marketing. It’s marketing to “get the word out” about products or services – sometimes pretty expensive products and services, too.
Look at all of those crazy car commercials, for example. How many of those do you think moved units off the lot?
Not too many.
Still, companies pump billions and billions of dollars into brand and message marketing every year. And there are plenty of agencies out there more than happy to vacuum up that money, promising a new “creative vision” and “empathetic message” that is only going to make the agency rich without ever ringing the register for the client.
Direct response is the exact opposite.
Direct mail generates a lot of intrigue and a lot of interest. It pushes pain points and paints a picture of how beautiful things could be with a product or service.
And then – most importantly – direct response actually asks for a response. It asks you to buy something right then and there, right on the spot.
It brings home the bacon!
Time Tested, Proven Marketing Principles That Really Work
Today’s marketing agencies are absolutely filled top to bottom with a lot of really bright, really successful, and really engaging people that are jumping from one lily pad to the next chasing the hottest marketing fad of the day.
Direct response, on the other hand, is built (brick by brick) by titans of the advertising industry.
We are talking about people like Claude Hopkins. We are talking about people like David Ogilvy. We are talking about people like Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, Gary Bencivenga, Clayton Makepeace, and more modern legends like Frank Kern, too.
All of these masters of direct response leverage time tested and proven principles of persuasion to convince complete and total strangers to part with their hard-earned money for products and services – all without ever having to meet a salesman in person.
That’s a game changer.
These tried-and-true principles act as the architecture for modern direct response advertising and will act as the architecture for direct response advertising decades and decades into the future.
That’s because these principles are informed by human psychology. Direct response jumps inside the brains of prospects, yanks on wires specifically designed to elicit specific behaviors, and then pockets the profit along the way.
Direct Response is Fun!
Let’s not forget about how much more fun direct response is, too.
Sure, putting together a really creative brand advertisement that might pick up some golden lions during the next award show is a real dopamine dump.
But there’s nothing quite like carefully crafting a direct response message, hitting publish and sending it out to all of your prospects, and then watching as the sales come cascading in.
There’s something almost magnetic, something almost magical about this moment. Knowing that you were able to laser in on a specific pain point or promise prospects would go crazy for, crafted the right message for that target, and then were able to reap all of the financial rewards.
You’ll never forget your first winning direct response ad. And you’ll never want to go back to message marketing again, either!
Trackable, Measurable, and Targeted
Of course, another reason that Josh Henry-Hicks is such a fan of direct response is because it can be tracked, it can be measured, and it can be laser targeted to specific individuals (groups of individuals) for greater impact.
Brand and message marketing is just kind of “out there”.
Think about the last time you were listening to the radio in your car. You probably heard 100 or more different advertisements that had absolutely zero relevance to you whatsoever.
Think about the last time you watched your favorite show or game on TV, too. The odds are pretty good you saw hundreds of ads that you wish you could have skipped in real time, leapfrogging right over them because they had zero relevance to you at all.
With direct response, though, that shotgun style approach to marketing is almost criminal.
Instead, direct response marketers carefully craft their message to a specific medium into a specific group – all in an effort to have the highest possible impact and generate the most sales.
When you come across a direct response ad that really resonates with you it’s almost a visceral feeling. You feel like the marketer knows you top to bottom, inside and out, and their promise feels a whole lot more relevant to your situation.
When done correctly, these kinds of ads are almost hypnotic in their ability to sell.
That’s a superpower that every marketer would love to have!
You’re Never Done with Direct Response
At the end of the day, though, one of the great things about direct response is that you aren’t ever going to cross the finish line.
You’ll never be able to craft an ad with 100% response.
You’ll never be able to craft an ad with a 100% conversion rate.
You’ll never be able to craft an ad with a 100% upsell rate.
Instead you’ll always be on the hunt for constant improvement, trying to chase perfection you know is never attainable. It’s a lot like the way that elite level athletes continue to train and fight to win over and over again, always in pursuit of the next big championship or the next big ring.
The post Why Ads Expert Josh Henry-Hicks Buys Into Direct Response Marketing appeared first on 360PRWire.
